LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



UNITED STATES OF AMEEIOA. 



SHOULD THE PUBLIC LIBRARIES BE 
OPENED 01 SUNDAY? 



AN ADDRESS 

BY 

Henry Ward Beecher, 



Delivered at the Request of Members of the Mercantile Library 

Association of New York City, in the Cooper Union Hall, 

Monday Evening, April 22d, 1872. Phonographically 

Reported by T. J. Ellinwood. 




NEW YORK: 
J. B. FORD & COMPANY, 

I 




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3*- 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



New York, April, 1872. 
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher: 

Dear Sir: The question of the advisability of opening the reading- 
rooms of the great public libraries on Sunday is being earnestly discussed 
among their members. We, who are members of the Mercantile Library, 
feel solicitous that this matter should be decided so as to advance the best 
moral, intellectual, and social interests of ourselves, our associates, and all 
the young men of New York, and therefore we respectfully request that 
for our guidance you will, if convenient and agreeable to yourself, give 
public expression to your views upon this important question on some day 
to be named by you. 

Respectfully, 

Henry D. Lloyd, Peter Yoorhis, 

George C. Lee, Wm. G. Da vies, 

Daniel E. Appleton, Wm. L. Felt, 
John C. Lloyd, Wm. O. McDowell 

and several hundred others. 



Brooklyn, April, 1872. 
Henry D. Lloyd and others : 

Gentlemen: I have received from the Trustees of the Cooper Institute, 
at your request, an invitation to address them upon the propriety of open- 
ing the public reading-rooms of large cities upon Sunday, under suitable 
regulations. It will give me great pleasure to comply with your wishes, and 
unless some other date shall be more suitable, I will take the liberty of 
mentioning Monday night, April 22. I am, very truly, yours, 

HENRY WARD BEECHER. 



The Library 
of Congress 

washington 



AN ADDRESS 
Henry Ward Beecher. 



Should the Public Libraries he Opened 
on Sunday? 



It has been said that whenever the clergy shall have arrived at 
anything like a unanimous opinion upon the subject of the obser- 
vance of the Lord's Day, we shall find the laity agreeing. I have no 
doubt of it, and believe also that the converse is true ; that when- 
ever the intelligent laity agree upon the subject of the Sabbath day, 
they will find the clergy agreeing with them. For, happily, in our 
day there is little distinction between the clergy and the laity. The 
word citizen swallows up all distinctions. We dwell together in 
one commonwealth, having common interests. There is such 
familiar intercourse, there is such necessity of mutual consideration 
and consultation, that in regard to all great moral public questions 
no lines ought to be drawn between the opinions of the clergy and 
those of the laity. 

I count it a most auspicious circumstance when an audience is 
gathered together, not on the spur of some campaign excitement, 
but when sober men and sober women assemble to discuss a great 
moral topic that can have no more interest to them than such as 
springs from its relation to the commonwealth. I should be sorry 
to suppose that this was a partisan meeting. I should be sorry to 
be supposed myself to be antagonistic to those who are desirous of 
maintaining the sanctity of the Lord's Day. I am the child of a 
Puritan ancestry. My own earliest associations are with the strict- 
est observance of the Lord's Day. I love that day. I love its 
usages. I desire to see it maintained. More than that, I would 
have it lengthen its cords, and strengthen its stakes. And where it 
has done one thing well, I would have it do twenty more things 
well. It is because I believe that this day of rest is capable of a 
larger use — not by making it less moral, not by treating it in a 



4 SHOULD THE PUBLIC LIBRARIES 

spirit of desecration, not by dragging it down, but by giving it a 
fuller and broader application — that I am here to-night. It is be- 
cause I believe it can be made better than it has been, and more 
heartily maintained and more sincerely respected and loved. 

I know there are many who hold that this is a day which is pre- 
scribed by direct divine authority, that it is obligatory in the sense 
of an express command, and that the mode of observation is su b- 
stantially settled. Men whose opinions I respect hold these views much 
more rigidly than I do myself. But I find over against them a very 
large number of people, many of whom were not born in this land, 
and who have brought the customs and usages of other lands to our 
shores. There are among us many men of various degrees of intel- 
ligence who believe that Sunday is more a holiday, in the higher 
sense of that term, than anything else, and that it ought to be a day 
full of mere social enjoyment. I respect their liberty of opinion, 
although I do not entertain their sentiments, either. I stand be- 
tween these two extremes, attempting, if possible, to find a ground 
on which both classes may stand, so there may not be any obstacle 
in the way of cooperation on the part of all intelligent and good 
citizens. 

This is a day peculiarly American. Not that it has not been 
observed in all countries, but that perhaps nowhere else, from the 
very founding of the colonies, has there been an institution which 
has been like the New England and the American Sunday — the day 
of rest— the one religious day. In other lands it has been partly 
religious, or it has been a day of games and exhibitions and sports, 
with a little preliminary ruffle of church, and all the rest of the 
garment of anything ; but it was in America that the Lord's Day 
dawned, as it were, with the light of the other world shining over 
its brow. It has stretched out its hands in our thought, and 
in our associations, and spread multitudinous blessings over 
all the continent. I used to think that nothing was on Sun- 
day as it was on other days. Surely, to my eye, the sun rose with 
more majesty and the birds sang with more sweetness on that day 
than on any other. To my remembrance, the silence of Sunday was 
like no other silence. Although I confess that as a boy, I did not 
keep the Lord's Day according to the catechetical instruction which 
I received; although I acknowledge that I indulged in many a sin- 
ful giggle, and found humor in many things which were not allowed 
in church, or elsewhere, still I bear witness that a certain moral 
sensibility, and a certain poetic element, was derived by me from the 
strict and Puritan observance of the Sabbath, which I can nevei 
enough be thankful for. 



BE OPENED ON SUNDAY? 5 

I honor the memory of the men who kept the old Sunday ; and 
if I thought that the steps which we make in advance would take 
away from the idea that on that day the Lord is especially near to 
men (in their thought, though not in fact) ; if I thought that they 
would subtract one particle of its stimulation of the best and noblest 
elements of man's nature, I would never utter a word, nor by any 
means give my influence toward the abatement of the rigor of the 
Sabbath observances. I stand here loving the day, and honoring it ; 
I honor it for what it has done for me, for my fathers, and for the 
community. And I say, not that there must be less Sunday, but 
that there must be more Sunday ; not that there must be less sanc- 
tity, but that sanctity, taking to itself humanity, must be broader 
and deeper ; not that the church should be robbed, but that the 
church should know better how large is the patrimony which God 
has given to it in this day. 

I do not think that we have received our Lord's Day on the 
ground of absolute command. Certainly the Jewish Sabbath is not 
ours. We cannot, therefore, divine from that Sabbath how this day 
ought to be kept. The old Jews kept their Sabbath as simply a day 
of rest and recreation. They were not forbidden to have social en- 
tertainment on that day. Indeed, it was the one joyful, cheerful day 
of the week. The only thing that was barred was work. Abstinence 
from work was carried to a ridiculous extent. It was forbidden, for 
instance, that a man should walk with heavy nails in his shoes, lest 
walking on the grass he should shell out some of its seeds, and so do 
that which was equivalent to thrashing grain on Sunday. It was 
not allowable for a man to lead an ass to water with a long halter, 
because, while the horse bore a part of the weight of that halter, 
the man would bear the other part, and so would be carrying bur- 
dens on Sunday and would be working ! But to entertain one's 
friends on Sunday ; to rejoice with them ; to cheer their hearts with 
entertainments prepared beforehand — that was especially allowable. 
Sunday was not distinctively a religious day. It was simply a day 
of secular rest. But that day has passed away for the most part, so 
that it gives us no idea of the method in which we should observe 
our holy day. 

So far as the Christian Sunday, or the Lord's Day, is concerned, 
we have no command in the New Testament as to the mode in 
which it is to be observed. We have scarcely more than the recog- 
nition that it was observed, in addition to the old Jewish Sabbath. 
We have neither from the primitive church nor from the Scriptures 
any hint, explicit and binding, as to the mode of observing it. This 
we know : that among the early Christians it was a day of joyfulness. 



SHOULD THE PUBLIC LIBB ABIES 

It was a day of triumph. It was a day in which they kindled the 
fervor of enjoyment more highly than on any other day of the week. 
Our Lord's Day has come to us strained through the usages of the 
mediaeval age and church ; but largely we have received it from the 
hands of our Puritan ancestors. Seeing the frivolity, the secular 
wastefulness which occurred on that day, they were by stress of 
circumstances, I think, driven to the opposite extreme ; and they 
made the day so exclusively a day of moral teaching and self-re- 
straint that it comes down to us with bars and bolts which did not 
belong to the primitive Lord's Day, and which reason does not 
justify. 

THE FOUNDATION PRINCIPLE. 

Now, we are to determine what is best in regard to the observance of 
Sunday by some principle ; and I know of no other principle which 
is so good as this : It is the lord's Day. 

Who is- the Lord ? He is that Jesus who healed on the Sabbath 
day, when the Jews thought it was professional work, and rebuked 
him for it. He is that Jesus who justified those disciples that were 
gathering wheat, and rubbing it in their hands, and eating it, being 
called to account for it by the Jews, as though rubbing were grind- 
ing, and therefore breaking Sunday ! He is' that Jesus who, when 
found fault with for healing a man on the Sabbath day, declared 
that it was lawful to do good on the Sabbath day. In the face and 
teeth of the Jews, he declared that the Sabbath was a day of 
humanity. 

On another occasion he declared of the Sabbath : "It was made 
for man, not man for it." It is man's servant, not his master. 
Wherever the Sabbath day, therefore, is so administered that any part 
of the community are oppressed by it, they have a right to rise up 
and break through that observance : because the day was not made 
to keep down manhood ; it was made to lift it up. It was not made 
to take away liberty ; it was made to increase it. It was not made 
to circumscribe man's thoughts and feeling and conduct; it was 
made to augment them. In short, the Lord's Day is a day for larger 
manhood. 

In. looking at it, then, in this way, we must inquire what are the 
beneficial uses that can be made of it. 

PHYSICAL EEST. 

First, we may adopt, very well, I think, to a certain extent, the 
primary functions of the Jewish Sabbath ; in other words, we may 
make it a day of bodily rest. We all need rest. We all need to 
have at least one day in the seven in which the mill does not grind, 
and in which the great maelstrom of society finds rest itself, and lets 



BE OF EN ED ON SUNDAY*! 7 

us rest. The merchant with his staggering brain, the busy plodder, 
the laborer, — all need rest. All American society is keyed so high, 
is stimulated to such a degree, that nowhere else is one day of full 
and complete physical rest more necessary than here. And in this 
regard the only people who are professionally without any rest are 
ministers of the Gospel. I need rest on Sunday, and do not get it. 
By the absence of it, I appreciate the desirableness of it. 

Friends, when it is said that we are to rest on the Sabbath day, 
it does not come home to many of you as it does to others. Most of 
those who are gathered here are too prosperous to know what is the 
sweetness and balm of the rest the Sabbath gives. How many 
poor men there are who rise before the sun rises, and who work 
through all the hours of the day, and through every day of the week, 
until late at night, and fall upon their couches conscious that they 
have taxed every bone and every muscle to its utmost ; and who, at 
last, when the six days have rolled around, and they wake prema- 
turely on the Sabbath with inexpressible gladness, turn and say, 
" Thank God ! I have one day on which to rest ! " 

If there were here a servile class as there has been in every nation 
for ages, this day of enforced rest, although it were enforced by a 
secular and physical law, would be a mercy. 'Where a day of rest has 
been enforced, it has been a supreme bounty to the working man. 

Moreover, how many men are there so separated from their 
households during the week that they can scarcely say that they 
know their own families ! They see them little. Many men go to 
their business early and return late, and do not see their children. 
They go away before the children are up, and come back after their 
children have gone to bed. How many men there are who need a 
day in which to make the acquaintance of their own households, in 
order that they may be known, and felt, and welcomed, and loved! 
How many men there are in the community who are goaded and 
taxed by anxious thought, by incessant attritions, and who long for 
one day in which they can unbuckle the harness and rest ! The 
Lord's Day is a bounty of God which they who are prosperous, and 
who are never taxed with care, and to whom God seems to have given 
a perpetual vacation, cannot understand; and it is not for them to 
determine what are the benefits of this day of rest. If you were to 
obliterate the Lord's Hay, it would double the burdens of the poor. 
It would make the yoke sorer, and it would- make the back ache 
more severely than ever. Therefore, for the sake of the poor toiling 
man, I say, Blessed be the one-seventh part of the time which God 
has hallowed, and which we are to consecrate to the needs of the 
laboring classes ! 



8 SEO ULD TEE P VELIO L TEE A BIES 

MORAL EDUCATION. 

Not only is there to be bodily rest, but, as the center of all man- 
hood, there must be a consideration of the moral element. The 
Lord's Day ought to be improved for moral culture, so far as possi- 
ble. I believe that worship in the house of God is a wise thing on 
the Sabbath for all good citizens. I would not enforce it by law ; 
I would not enforce it even by a coercive and punitive public senti- 
ment ; but I would, if I could, persuade all my fellow-citizens, once 
in the day, at least, to go — father and mother, and brothers and sis- 
ters — to church. A sweeter group, a pleasanter scene, no painter 
ever beheld, than a whole household cleanly dressed and with smil- 
ing faces, the large feet moving with heavier tread, and the little 
feet pattering on behind, going to the house of God, to unite in 
common hymns, and common supplications, and common worship, 
and listen together to instruction concerning the daily duties of life. 

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a very hard time, six days in the 
week wrestling with the devil. He does cudgel us, and tempt us to self- 
ishness, and make us envious, and jealous, and hard, and avaricious, 
as we toil and are taxed during the week. We do not mean to un- 
man ourselves on Monday ; but we fall into the current, and are 
swept into ways which in our better moments we would not choose, 
and which our judgment does not approve ; we live below our ideal ; 
and it is a good thing for us on one day of the week to go where we 
shall have our ideal raised again, and our memory of better things 
quickened. It is a good thing for us to have a day on which we can 
take breath, and get a new start for the next week. 

Do you tell me that the working people cannot go to church 
after having toiled all the week ? Going to church once on Sunday 
will rest them. For the matter of that, I am witness to many and 
many a man who has found the sweetest and soundest rest in church ! 
But e^ en if they maintain their wakefulness (as, if the service and 
sermon are not too long, they will), there is that in the economy of 
religious service which every man needs. And those men need it 
most who have the least of it. I mean those men who are at the 
lowest ebb in society ; the lowest classes of men, of whom I think, 
for whom I sympathize, to whom I give my life's best endeavors — 
my brethren who are at the bottom. In behalf of them, more than 
of any others, I plead for the Sabbath services of the church ; be- 
cause you can do for men nothing so good as to make them compe- 
tent to do for themselves. I say that essential manhood begins in 
moral sentiment, and that the poor who have true moral principle 
in them can organize more speedily around themselves the deficient 
elements, and lift themselves up into light and privilege. A poor man 



BE OPENED ON SUNDAY? 9 

who is without a moral sentiment in him is poor indeed. It is a good 
thing to give a man a barrel of flour rather than that his household 
should lack bread; but there is far a better gift to a man than that? 
even ; it is the power to earn that barrel of flour. It is a good 
thing to give men refreshment, and amusement, if need be, on the 
Sabbath day ; but it is better to give them a manhood out of which 
will come satisfaction, and rest, and refinement, and education, and 
aspiration. I plead for the Sabbath service of the church as one of 
the elements of education needed by all, but more especially by those 
who are poor, uncomely, unshorn, unwashed, uneducated. The 
lower down you go, the more men you find who need the influ- 
ences that fall upon the top. As in the forest it is the tops of the 
trees that cheat the parts below of sunlight, so in society the bottom 
is cheated by the top. The top takes all privilege, and the bottom 
has little or none. 

THE SOCIAL ELEMENT. 

More than this, while the Lord's Day should be a day of rest and 
of moral culture, for the sake of manhood, I hold that it is a day on 
which religion should be helped by the social element. I do not 
believe in solitariness in religion. I do not believe that any thought 
or feeling is better for having grown alone. A plant that has grown 
in the dark lacks color and fiber. A potato vine that has grown in a 
cellar toward a little crack through which comes a beam of light — 
how spindling and worthless it is ! A religious culture which is 
cloistered and closeted is full of sentiment and sap ; but it is crude 
sap and useless sentiment. 

When the Lord made a man, he made him to grow altogether. 
You cannot send up his religious feelings like a steeple, while all 
his other feelings remain uncultivated. His intellect must grow in 
connection with his social affections, and his social affections must 
grow in connection with his moral sentiments, if you would give 
him true religious culture. 

The Lord's Day is a good day in which to learn to love your neigh- 
bor as yourself. I do not think it is a great sin if your neighbor has 
his side door open on the Sabbath day for you to walk across the 
law r n and sit on his porch, and talk with him of things seemly. I 
think the Lord likes that. I do not think that if your household is 
made radiant, and your children wake up and say (as I never did) 
" Thank God, it is Sunday !" I don't think that if you make it the 
best day of the week, and 3 r our children are good-natured and joyful, 
that they are any the worse. Let the church service inspire conscience 
and moral sen timent, and let the household inspire social affections, 
love, and fellowship one with another. Let a part of the observance 



1 SHOULD TUB P TJBLIC L1BB ABIES 

of the Lord's Day be that which makes men, forget their differences, 
forget that they are rivals, forget each other's faults, and look upon 
one another as fellow-travelers toward the great future. Let men 
learn on the Lord's Day to worship God in the church, but also to 
love their fellows in the household. To love men — is that a desecra- 
tion of Sunday ? I believe in letting out the harness a little. I 
believe in making the holes for the buckle a little lower down. Let 
our Lord's Day be a church day in the morning, and a family day 
the rest of the time. I think that we preach too much. I think 
that we overteach and overtax in the Sabbath school. I think we 
are making the Lord's Day laborious. I do not think that we use 
Sunday enough to make the family finer, sweeter, more compact, 
more homogeneous, more social, and so more religious. I see many 
men who come to church stern and stiff. They would not for all 
the world ride in a car on Sunday — no ; nor go over the ferry on 
Sunday — no ; nor do anything at home that made them agreeable — 
no ! I do not hold up their way of keeping the Sabbath as a model. 
Sunday is a day of household love. It is a day of family reunion. 
It is a day in which the children ought to feel that their father and 
mother never were so handsome before, and never were so good. It 
is a day in which every part of the household should, at the going 
down of the sun, be able to say, " Thank God for this open door of 
heaven, which has poured out so many happy hours on us." 

It is bad to bring up children with such a sense of the sanctity 
of Sunday that they shall feel not gently restrained, and sweetly 
and pleasantly impressed, but that the day is a terror, a yoke, an 
iron rod. It is God's day, and is a bounty, and children ought to 
know it. It is a day of liberty to men, and children ought to be 
made to feel it. Any administration of the Lord's Day in the family, 
which makes men tire of it, is bad. Any way of keeping Sunday so 
that the household is not made happier and better by it, is an un- 
christian way of keeping it. It was made for man ; man was not 
made for it. 

SUNDAY TO BE MADE BOUNTIFUL TO ALL. 

There is one other point that I now wish to press upon you. 
Thus far I have attempted by a plain expression of my views, to 
gain the confidence of those who are really friends of the Sabbath, 
and now I wish to turn to these persons, and say, " It is not enough 
to "&eep" Sunday. Sunday is to be administered as well as kept. 
You are bound to see to it, not merely that you do not break the 
Lord's Day, but that it does its appropriate work through the whole 
community. This is your duty. For instance, you may be prosper- 



BE OPENED ON SUN DA Y? 11 

| 
ous ; you may be able to say, " I go to church ; thank God I do not 

ride in the cars either ; I go in my own carriage ; I attend to what 
the minister says ; I pay liberally for the support of the G-ospel ; 
what lack I yet ?" And you return to your dinner, cooked on Saturday, 
perhaps, but bountiful, and warmed with generous liquors; and 
made palatable in other ways. You may be a prosperous man, and 
your house entertain all that heart could wish, and on Sunday, after 
dinner, you lie on the sofa, slippered and with dres&ing-gown, and 
with every comfort; and at night you gather your household to- 
gether, and have, oh ! such a happy time ; and you say to yourself, 
" How ridiculous it is for men to undertake to destroy this beautiful 
day I" I have a word to say to you. You have all that you could 
desire. You have your pew in church. You have the respect of 
your minister. You walk in a circle that does obedience to you. 
You have a magnificent home, and all manner of luxuries. But 
how is it with the poor cooper? How is it with the poor black- 
smith ? How is it with the poor laborer, who climbs four pairs of 
stairs to his solitary room in some attic where he lives without com- 
forts, without a household, without a branch which bears a blossom ? 
The Jewish Sabbath became a day for prosperous men, and was 
administered so that the poor man was oppressed, and Christ said 
substantially this : "Any keeping of the Sabbath which neglects hu- 
manity to the poorest and the lowest is a violation of the day — a 
breaking of it." 

STREET CAES OUGHT TO RUIS". 

You must not take your measure from your own prosperity. It 
is very easy for you to say, piously, " City cars ought not to run on 
Sunday ; people ought to stay where they are." For my own part, 
I believe that city cars ought to run on Sunday ; and if you want 
me to compromise the matter, I will say that on Sunday rich men 
shall not ride in them, and poor people shall be allowed to ride in 
them at half price ! You ought to make locomotion easy to those 
who need it most. Those who are obliged to work all the week, 
cannot on week days visit their family connections, their parents, 
their brothers and sisters, their cousins, or their uncles and aunts, 
as the case may be, who are scattered here and there, some in Brook- 
lyn, for instance, while they are in the upper part of New York. You 
can make visits in your carriages, on any day you please, hut the 
poor man needs to have a car on Sunday. And I believe in keep- 
ing up the affinities of friendship. I believe in their being minis- 
tered to, even on the Sabbath day. Therefore I believe in running 
the cars. Not that there are not many evils connected with it, but 
that on the whole it serves the cause of the poor in the community. 



12 SHOULD THE PUBLIC LIBRARIES 

I would, however, have it done less at the expense of the drivers and 
conductors than it now is. There is a great deal of sinning against 
the poor in that direction, of which I shall speak in a moment. 

THE DUTY OF THE COMFORTABLE. 

There are a great many persons who feel that they have done 
their work for the Sabbath as soon as they have gone to church. 
Then their conscience is satisfied. "Ah !" says a man as he begins to 
divest himself of his raiment for his couch, "I have kept the law. I 
have been to church twice. I have heard the minister. I have 
seen that my children were all rightly dressed and properly cate- 
chised. I have done my whole duty." Have you ? Do you know 
what is the condition of the people in your ward ? Do you know 
how men live in the families next to you ? Do you know how 
the poor men over the way in the street behind you are living ? 
Do you know anything about your fellow men ? Has the Lord's 
Day made you acquainted with anything beyond yourself ? Have 
you extended your sympathy to those who are around about you ? 
Do you feel more tolerant toward imperfect men in the community ? 
Are you a larger and more generous man ? Is your blood warmer ; 
or are you a cold man still ? Are you selfish in your religion ? If 
so, you have not kept Sunday as you should have kept it, and your 
church observances have not done you good. 

CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES. 

All men must keep the Sabbath according to the way in which 
they are circumstanced. In the village, where the church is capa- 
cious enough to hold all the population, where men live at home, 
and where there are no strangers, I see no special reason why there 
should be anything more than the church and the household. You 
can make no institutions that are better than the family ; and the 
instruction of the church and the social advantages of the house- 
hold are adequate for sparse populations of village life. But that 
which, may be enough for a village of five hundred or a thousand 
inhabitants, is not enough for a city of a million. For instance, in 
the city of New York, there are two hundred and fifty thousand 
people who could not get into the churches of the city. If you 
should fill them ful 1 to the dome, there would then be two hundred 
and fifty thousand men and women who were excluded. You have 
not churches enough. There is this vast number whom you have 
not made provision for — and that, leaving out the sick and others 
who could not attend church on the Lord's Day. In village life 
there is provision ; but not in city life. 



BE OPENED ON SUNDAY? 13 

SPECIAL CLASSES. 

For example, look at the artisans in New York — the workers in 
all manner of materials. Have you taken the trouble to go among 
them ? Many have. There are missionary spirits who have gone 
into every part of the city. But many of you never have. You 
have never gone into cellars and attics. You have never seen where 
the shoemaker and the blacksmith work. You have never been in 
the nooks and corners where many of the trades are carried on. 

When Sunday comes round, I say, "Blessed be God for my 
house !" But as I look round on every side, I say, "Probably there 
are more than ten thousand families over there in that great, city 
who have no room to spread themselves." They are high up, or 
they are low down ; and whole families are grouped in one or Wo 
small rooms. What sort of a home have they for Sunday ? There 
are men who have not smelled fresh air for six days. There are 
men on whose head, for six days, the light has hardly shone. There 
are men etiolated and without expansion, without aerated blood, 
reclused and hidden ; and if, when Sunday comes, they say to their 
wife and their children, " What if we go down to Greenwood, to-day, 
and hear the birds sing ? Let us go and see how sweet things look 
down there," — would you meet them with a scowl as they went out 
of the house, and say to them, " My friends, this is the Lord's Day, 
and you ought not to be taking the cars and riding down there " ? 
My answer would be, " Yes, this is the Lord's Day, and the earth is 
the Lord's, and the fullness thereof — the country as well as the city." 
If men are, in the providence of God, so shut up in the city that 
they cannot breathe the pure, sweet, fresh air, though I would say 
to them, " You ought not to neglect the church, it is necessary for 
you ; you, more than anybody, ought to have the benefit of t]ie 
church on Sunday;" yet would I also say, "During a part 01 
this day you have a right to God's free air ; and during a part of 
it you have a right to the sun in the country. The cars are 
yours ; the sun is yours ; the birds are yours ; the sky is yours ; the 
earth is yours. Take them, in the name of God, and be thankful 
for them." 

There is another class in our cities who need some help for the 
Sabbath day. I refer to the vast number of persons who are, by the 
nature of their work, forbidden to have a Sunday. I do not know 
how many upper and under- servants there are in our great hotels. 
I know that there is an army of such persons, to whom no day ot 
rest comes, and I confess that I do not know how to give advice in 
regard to them ; but I do say that some means ought to be provided 
to enable this class of laborers to take cheap rides, during part of 



1 4 SHO ULD THE P UBLIG LIBB ABIES 

the Sabbath day, out of the places in which they are confined in the 
city. 

But, on the other hand, what shall we do for the car-driver and 
the conductor? These men are, I think, as much overworked as 
any class in our cities — that is, they are worked more hours ; and, 
as far as lawful pay is concerned, at less wages than any other class 
in the community. While on the Lord's Day they are conveying 
their fellows to church, to the houses of relatives, or to the fel- 
lowship of God in Nature, they themselves have no rest. Some ar- 
rangement ought to be made by which drivers and conductors should 
have relief on Sunday — some more equitable mode of alternation in 
duty. 

Take the very institutions which we are considering to-night — 
the art galleries, the lyceums, the reading-rooms, and the libraries. 
It is sometimes said, "If you open them on Sunday, you take away 
the Sabbatli from their custodians — from the janitor, the librarian, 
the clerk, the keeper." Some provision ought to be made that, while 
you are making Sunday better for the young men of the city, you 
shall not make it worse for these administrants. There ought to be 
some arrangement by which every man connected with any enter- 
prise should have the benefit of Sunday, in some way. 

The ferries ought not to be run on Sunday, unless the ferry com- 
panies give a part of the day to their employes. Hotel keepers 
ought to see that their employees have a part of Sunday to them- 
selves. Christian gentlemen, Christian ladies, this is what I call 
administering Sunday. You ought, in some way, to carry the 
bounty of Sunday to everybody. You ought to see that there are 
means provided for moral instruction to every class in this great 
community. 

THE PEEILS OF YOUNG MEN". 

Look at the young men who come to New York. I do not know 
how many of them there are without homes or friends. I sup- 
pose that when I count them by tens of thousands I am moderate. 
What is the life of these young men ? He is fortunate who has 
come from a country Christian household and home, and has had 
his lot cast in a good boarding-house. There are some good boarding- 
houses. I stand up for that much-maligned class, boarding-house 
keepers. There are some who I know are mothers in Israel and 
fathers in Israel to those that are in their households, watching for 
them, and doing for them. But, on the other hand, there are a 
great many boarding-houses that are not the way to heaven — unless 
it be through vigils and fasts ! 

Here are thousands of young men who come down to New York 



BE OPENED ON SUNDAY! 15 

from warm-hearted family circles. They are strangers among 
strangers. They are worked hard through the day. They either 
sleep at the store .where they work, or roost in a boarding-house. 
For them there are no provisions made which answer at all to their 
home-life. When the Sabbath day comes, one of these young men 
lifts himself up from his cot under the counter, or on the counter, 
or in his desolate little bedroom, and dresses himself and goes to 
breakfast. After breakfast, the question comes up as to what he 
shall do. u Tom, what are you going to do ?" " I don't know ; 
what are you going to do ?" " Well, about the same thing." It 
being Sunday, and just after breakfast, it is half-past nine. They 
have slept, and slept, and slept ; and they have eaten their late 
breakfast ; and they say, " Let us go out in the street and see what 
we can find." Perhaps they make up their minds to go to church 
somewhere. They saunter along. There is no special church that 
they know anything about, or are interested in. They go into the first 
one that they see open. They count, one, two, three, four, five, six, — 
well, there are forty or fifty people there, it may be. " Well," they say, 
" don't let us stop here ; let us go up to the next church." They go 
up to the next church, and as they enter, two or three people give 
them a polite stare, as much as to say, " What under the heavens have 
you come here for ?" Nobody rises to receive them. No courtesy 
nor kindness is shown them. For you know that men and women 
who would be ashamed not to be polite to any one in their own 
house, think it right to treat every stranger in the Lord's house as 
though he were a penitentiary convict. Not daunted by this cold 
reception, they venture forward, and think they will take that seat ; 
but the usher says, " No, not there," and takes them back, and 
finally seats them in the last pew in the corner. They sit down, and 
look at each other a moment, and then get up and bolt. From Sun- 
day to Sunday, in this way they go to different places. They make 
a kind of pilgrimage from church to church ; and they are fortunate 
if they find one where they are courteously received, where they are 
made to feel welcome, where it seems like home, where some one says 
to them, " Where do you live ? Shall I not come and see you this 
week ? Will you not come and see me ?" I fear that there are hun- 
dreds and thousands of young men who on Sunday mornings go to 
churches and find nothing that does them good. What do they 
generally find ? Suppose they get a lodgment, what is the nature 
of the teaching which is administered to them ? They are told, 
perhaps, that the ministry has been handed down from the time of 
the apostles — and it interests them exceedingly ! They are glad that 
it is so ! There is no special nourishment in it ; but still it is 



16 SHOULD THE PUBLIC LIBRARIES 

proved. They get just about that spiritual nourishment which they 
would if they sat and saw crochet-work going on. No stitches are 
let down. Every thread is in the right place. Or, in another 
church, they are told that, 

" In Adam's fall we sinned all." 
— a very comforting doctrine ! 

Others go to still another church, and they find out something 
about Belshazzar, or something about the visions of Daniel, or 
something about the disclosures in the Apocalypse. How seldom 
do young men get into a church where the preacher is speaking of 
things that go right home to them — their temptations ; their diffi- 
culties ; their wants ! How seldom do they get into a church where 
they feel that there are hearts which throb and glow with the spirit 
of brotherhood! .How seldom do they get into a church where 
there is something that their souls can feed on ! 

There is many a young man on the verge of destruction, who be- 
gan right, whose inspiration was right, whose ideal was right, but 
who is weak on the social side, who is tempted in this way and that, 
and who has come to a point where all the barriers which restrain 
him from evil are in danger of being broken down. He was edu- 
cated to honesty ; he means to be honest ; but his wants are increas- 
ing every week, and are not increasing in the right directions. He 
stands unsettled, vibrating between right and wrong. There is 
enough conscientiousness left in him to chastise him with a whip of 
scorpions. And if now he could go into a house of God where some 
man spoke to his need, he might be lifted out of the snare and saved 
from the pit. There are many places, hundreds, thousands of places 
in the city of New York where he might receive help and succor ; 
but he does not know how to get to them. He wanders through 
some of the principal thoroughfares or conspicuous streets ; and if he 
finds anything to help him it is the exception. He is apt to find 
nothing but coldness and indifference. And he strolls back again, 
and thanks God that at last it is two o'clock — dinner time. That 
helps Sunday amazingly. He eats his dinner. Then he goes out to 
smoke. When it is three or four o'clock he does not know what to 
do. He walks around the streets. By and by it is supper time. He 
eats supper. So at last he has worn out all the day — and the day 
has pretty nearly worn him out. 

At night he says, " Look here, this is a doleful business ; I wish 
I could go somewhere where somebody cares for me." Alas ! there 
are places where somebody cares too well for him. Over the d\ trance 
is written " The way to joy /" and over the exit is written, " The 
way to damnation" He goes in and is caught as a bird in the snare 



BE OPENED ON SUNDA Y? 17 

of the fowler. Hecatombs of young men are destroyed in this city 
without mourners. Hundreds and thousands of young men in every 
single year go down the way of death, and nobody cares for their 
souls. Fellow citizens, I say that the young men of New York — 
the mechanics, the clerks, the laboring men — ought to have some- 
thing on the Lord's Day that shall be a home or a resort for them. 
Our Christianity has done much. The family has done much. And 
there are self-denying laborers in households and in churches. These 
institutions are doing a great many things. But there are things 
that ought to be done wdiich are not yet done. There ought to be, 
conspicuously, such places open on evenings and on Sundays as shall 
leave a young man without excuse if he wanders into by and for- 
bidden paths for the sake of company. 

THE PKOPOSED REMEDY. 

Under such circumstances, if it is proposed to open, on the Lord's 
Day, well-lighted reading-rooms, comely library halls, and galleries 
where no licentious art solicits, but where there is an appeal to the 
sense of beauty ; if it is proposed to open places, where there is lib- 
erty, where comforts are provided, and where young men can meet 
their fellows and not be thrown out into the street, I say, in the 
spirit of that Master whose resurrection or birth we celebrate on 
that Sabbath-day, try it — try it ! 

I beseech of those conscientious men w r ho are opposed to this 
movement not to misrepresent the intentions of those wdio are in 
favor of opening these reading-rooms and libraries; not to say, 
" They do not care anything for Sunday, and they are going to 
break down the bars and destroy the Sabbath." We are stepping in 
to endeavor to supplement the noble work of the churches, and do 
something that the churches were not made to do, and do not per- 
form, and cannot perform. There are thousands and hundreds of 
thousands in New York who, on Sunday, owing to their peculiar 
relations and situations, need something done for them more than 
is done. If they could have homes, and if they could attend 
churches, that would be better ; but they have no homes, and they 
cannot, under the circumstances, always attend churches. 

Well, will they go to the reading-rooms ? Multitudes will not; 
but it would be worth while to open the reading-rooms if there 
should be fifty to attend them. And if nobody should go there cer- 
tainly will be no harm done. 

OBJECTIONS TO THE PLAN. 

t is objected, frequently, "You have no right to use the Lord's 
±j. for anything but religion." I say we have a right to use the 



1 8 ISHO ULD THE P UJBLIC LIBB ABIES 

Lord's Day for every purpose of humanity. I say that the Lord's 
Day is consecrated to every thing that does good to the manhood of 
men, whether it be strictly religious, whether it be moral, or whether 
it be social. But it is objected, "If you begin, you cannot stop. 
When you have once let down the bars, you cannot tell what the 
results will be." Fellow-citizens, we are not children. We are 
competent to self-government. We do not run at the sound of a 
rattle, and turn back at the sound of another. We are trying to 
make an experiment in good and virtuous earnest. We mean good, 
we mean virtue, we mean manhood ; and if when the experiment 
has been fairly tried, if after a sufficient number of years, we find 
that it does no good, or that it does harm, I pledge myself in behalf 
of the gentlemen who are now immediately concerned in this mat- 
ter, that they will shut the door as promptly as now they propose 
to open it. But it is said, "If you begin it, you cannot stop it." 
We can stop it. Any intelligent and moral community can go to 
the right or to the left according as they find by experience that 
going to the right or to the left is mischievous or beneficial. 

But it is said, " Look at the countries where there is no Sunday." 
Yes, look at the countries where people are not educated. Look at 
the countries where the people are priest-ridden. Look at the coun- 
tries where there is no popular liberty. There you find that the 
tyrant, where he be hierarch or potentate, pays off the people for 
their political liberty by giving them holidays to play on. They 
please them with amusement on Sunday, and other bribes, to make 
them willing to part with their privileges. But that is not the case 
in this country. It is not so in America. And I scorn, in behalf of 
our whole American citizenship, the allegation or the insinuation 
that we shall come to bull-fighting and cock-fighting and rat-baiting 
as soon as we open libraries and reading-rooms for men in order that 
they may instruct themselves. Do you suppose that we shall turn 
New York into Havana by giving a larger liberty of intelligence to 
young men ? The Lord may have made you very well as far as he 
went, but he stopped a great while too soon for your good, if that is 
your style of reasoning. 

But it is said, " It will lead young men to stay away from the 
churches, and substitute mere reading and intelligence for religion." 
My reply to that is, that it will draw ten young men from the street 
where it draws one from the church ; and it will be more likely to 
send ten men to the church, where one goes to it now without such 
an auxiliary. I believe it will be the means of increasing the moral 
susceptibilities of the young, and not of deadening them. 

But you say, " You will compel the librarian and the keepers to 



BE OPENED ON SUNDAY? 19 

stay there." I believe that the Young Men's Christian Associations 
would be happy to furnish volunteers who should take their turn in 
caring for the libraries and reading-rooms. Is there any better work 
that these associations could do than lending their aid to an under- 
taking like this ? And so far as the members of the Mercantile 
Library Association are concerned, I take it that there is principle 
•enough among them to see to it that every man who is employed in 
these places has some part of Sunday to himself. I do not wish to 
make the duties of custodians any heavier than they are already ; 
but I wish to extend the privileges of such benevolent institutions 
to those who have them not, and at the same time institute some 
mode of relief on Sunday for those who sit there during the other 
six days of the week. 

But, it is said, " It is undertaking that which is in the dark. It 
Is doing a very risky and perilous thing. You have never tried it 
You do not know what the end will be." I beg your pardon. The 
thing has been tried. I have in my hand a letter from Philadelphia, 
which I will read : 

2107 De Lancey Place, Philadelphia. 
Dear Sir: You are announced, I see, to speak, on Monday night, on the 
Library question. I desire to tell you that our Mercantile Library in Phil- 
adelphia has been open to the publio on Sunday for nearly two years — it 
will be two years in June. The first year it was closed early in the even- 
ing, but now it remains open until ten o'clock at night. The attendance 
has risen steadily, from three hundred per day the first year, until now the 
average is seven hundred, nearly all of whom are young meu. No books 
are given out on shares on that day, so that the army of employes have 
rest; but as the library is on the open-case plan, the readers may roam at 
will. 

Both the President, Mr. Morris Perot, and the Librarian in charge, Mr. 
D'Ossone, have expressed themselves to me as entirely satisfied with the 
working of the new arrangement, now too well established to be called an 
experiment. There is no disorder, and more than even the usual hush. In 
fact, it is only the opening of one cathedral more, where those who hunger 
and thirst during the busy week may come and be filled. 

Very truly, yours, 

S. C. Hallowell. 

Now, one word more. I wish to express my strong conviction 
that the Sabbath day is a boon and bounty of God to the common 
people, and to the working classes. Though I have advocated a cer- 
tain amount of social liberty, I wish you to remember that I quali- 
fied it, as I still qualify it, by expressing the opinion that all civic 
enjoyment or social feeling shall include in it a definite basis of 
moral instruction on the Sabbath day. I wish to add that while 
there will not be much gained in the upper ranks of society by the 
strict maintenance of Sunday, which has done its work mostly for 



20 THE PUBLIC LIBRARIES ON SUNDAY. 

the prosperous classes, I expect to see that the more liberal adminis- 
tration of the Lord's Day, religiously, socially, and intellectually, will 

rain down blessings upon the poorer classes. And for their sake 

for the sake of the friendless, for the sake of the homeless, for the 
sake of the young men and young women — I plead for the opening 
of places where they may go for company and for information on 
the Lord's Day. If it be thought best not to open them during the 
whole of Sunday, that is a matter to be determined on principles oi 
expediency. It seems to me that they should be open from noon 
until at least ten o'clock in the evening. The morning can be 
occupied profitably in other ways. The afternoon is when the time 
hangs heavy with indolence ; and the evening i^ the time when is 
most felt the call for social exhilaration. And if light and attractive 
reading-rooms and libraries are open, and if friendly voices are 
heard, and kind greetings are exchanged, I believe that " experience 
will show within a very few years, that New York never did a better 
thing than to provide these places and homes of Sabbath resort for 
the young men of the city. 



RESOLUTIONS. 



At the close of Mr. Beecher's remarks, Mr. Henry D. Lloyd offered the 
following resolutions, which were carried unanimously: 

"In the belief that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the 
Sabbath, and that it is right to do good on that day, 

" Resolved, That in order to add to the Christian's uses of the Lord's Day, 
in order that it may be not broken as now, but the better kept, in order that 
there may be not less, but more of Sunday, that our social, moral, and intel- 
lectual manhood may be suffered to develop on every day of the week, 
we earnestly call upon the managers of the, Mercantile,' the Cooper 
Union, the Astor, and all the great libraries, not only of this, but of all the 
great cities of this land, to throw open their reading-ro6ms upon the Sabbath 
day, under regulations which they may deem suitable; and, 

"Resolved, That we hereby offer the Rev. Henry Ward Beech er our 
heartfelt thanks for the noble eloquence with whifch he has- once more 
established the harmony between Christianity and humanity, and has 
pleaded in behalf of homeless youug men for humanizing resorts^on Sunday, 
mm*m**+ '"in it i i th ■ (i>i uinhiifi " 



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